Hypothetical:
I buy Macromedia Flash MX. It's great and it works and it does everything I need it to. Then, 6 months later, Flash 8 comes out. What's new? The GUI is slightly better, a few bugs were fixed, there are 3 new photoshop-style effects, and there are advanced/novice settings on the flashscript dialog window. These are all things that really should have been released as an expansion or update to Flash MX. It's not a different program. You can't tell me this shit cost millions to produce. If it did, they are not allocating their money appropriately.
All of this is fine, I just won't upgrade. I don't need those features.
Oh but hey, I'm trying to share files among my clients, and they all have Flash 8. And guess what, it's not backwards-compatible. Great. So now I have no choice but to upgrade.
It's $700 to buy it new. But oh, hey, how nice, it's only $200 to upgrade. (Yes, I'm aware we're up to CS4 now. Like I said this is a hypothetical.)
It's $200--the price of three weeks of groceries, or an entire car payment--just for the ability to open files made IN THE SAME PROGRAM, WHICH REALLY IS ONLY A VERY TINY UPGRADE FROM THE PREVIOUS VERSION.
This is not financially sound. Why should I pay tons of cash to re-buy the same fucking program over and over EVERY YEAR. Now, if the price were relative to the amount of new material, say, $20, I'd fork it over. But ten times that? Fuck that. I'm not buying a program in this scenario, I'm paying to rent it for a year until the next one comes out!
Downloading programs which are only minor upgrades from software which I already paid for is a way of telling these assholes to fuck off if they think they can bleed us for every penny for stupid tiny technical upgrades which should have been there in the first place!
On the same note, I buy quality software. People don't buy PC software back, they don't accept returns for opened PC merchandise. So why is it a bad thing if I want to take it for a test ride before making a commitment. That's like buying a new car because the paint color is nice without even driving it.